Psychodynamic Practice
Individuals, Groups and Organisations
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Oedipus at work: A family affair?
Paula Nicolson
To cite this article: Paula Nicolson (2012) Oedipus at work: A family affair?, Psychodynamic
Practice, 18:4, 427-440, DOI: 10.1080/14753634.2012.719738
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Psychodynamic Practice
Vol. 18, No. 4, November 2012, 427–440
Oedipus at work: A family affair?
Paula Nicolsona,b,c*
a
Health Professions Council, London, UK; bBritish Psychological Society, Leicester,
UK; cAcademy of Social Sciences, London, UK
(Received 31 December 2010; final version received 12 March 2012)
The ‘family’, and the Oedipus complex in particular, is alive and kicking,
not only as a means and/or metaphor for explaining family relationships
and dynamics, but also as a diagnostic lens for consulting beyond the
family, to individuals, groups and organisations and as a means of
considering defences against anxiety and gender relations. This paper
examines the emotional ‘fallout’ within two organisational case studies:
(a) a group relations exercise for planning an event by clinical
psychology trainees and (b) consulting to a group of social work
managers whose responsibility is to protect vulnerable children. The
paper juxtaposes observations from these case studies with classical
Freudian analysis of group behaviours and Kleinian/post-Kleinian
perspectives on defending against anxiety in organisations. It suggests a
reiteration of the power of both Freudian and Kleinian perspectives on
the primal scene as a problem-solving focus for organisational
consultancy.
Keywords: Oedipus complex; organisation; family; anxiety; groups
Introduction: the Oedipus complex
The central significance of the Oedipus complex, the primal scene at the
heart of ‘family’ life, may be one of the more difficult ideas to grasp in
everyday thinking, perhaps because its repression occurs at a deep level
(Loewald, 2000). My intention in this paper is to outline how recognition of
an Oedipal ‘mindset’ (Dartington, 1996; Stein, 2007) can shed valuable light
onto organisational dynamics.
Gender and the Oedipus complex
Ever since Freud discovered the Oedipus complex it has been recognised as the
central conflict in the human psyche – the central cluster of conflicting
*Email: paula.nicolson@rhul.ac.uk
ISSN 1475-3634 print/ISSN 1475-3626 online
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14753634.2012.719738
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P. Nicolson
impulses, phantasies, anxieties and defences. It has therefore become the centre
of psychoanalytic work (Segal, 2007, p. 1).
Freud’s account of the Oedipus complex, the ‘classical’ view, revolves
around the phallic stage of development (around the years three to five)
when the boy has phantasies of genital desire towards his mother (Freud,
1913/2007). Through fearing his father’s wrath and reprisals, and thus
castration, the boy identifies with his father by taking in the patriarchal/
parental authority (the phallus) to be his own internal monitor, represented
in the development of the super-ego (Freud, 1918[1914]). The girl during the
phallic stage comes to realise her own and her mother’s ‘lack’ leading her to
sever some of the close and exclusive attachment she has felt hitherto with
the mother (Freud, 1924/2007).
Kleinian approaches to the Oedipus complex differ from the classical
Freudian. For Klein, the mother was the first and most important ‘other’/
‘object’ in the infant’s physical and mental life. She (Klein, 1928/1998)
considered the Oedipus complex as starting in the first year of life, connected
to the baby’s relationship to the breast. For Segal, the Kleinian version is as
follows: It is the frustration at the breast, and crucially the weaning, that
makes the infant turn to the father’s penis and become aware of the triangular
situation (Segal, 2007, p. 2).
Working through the Oedipus complex happens through a series of
rivalries and relinquishments – with the child being able to give up the desire
to annihilate one parent as the rival for total possession of the other one
(Laufer, 2007) and perhaps with the boy leaving the mother’s protection to
make something of himself in the world independently, maybe to rediscover
her favour (Schwartz, 2010).
A girl on the other hand (Chodorow, 1978) has a continuing significant
relationship with her mother. The classical position, that while boys react to
their fear of castration girls experience penis envy, is played out by the girl
seeing her mother as a sexual rival for her father. Consequently, she feels
hostility towards her mother. Chodorow argues that the Oedipus complex
should not be seen as symmetrical for boys and girls. Girls may idealise a
father who is not there enough and there is evidence from social psychology
research that fathers more than mothers may ‘gender type’ their
children, encouraging boys to be like them and girls to be more seductive
(pp. 118–119).
The triangular situation
Freud saw this situation as ‘complicated’ and that the ‘. . . intricacy of the
problem is due to two factors: the triangular character of the Oedipus
situation and the constitutional bisexuality of each individual’ (Freud,
1923/2007). The heart of the Oedipal configuration therefore is about
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difference and experiencing the ‘triangular situation’, so that conflicts
about seduction, betrayal and defending against anxiety become
preoccupations.
The baby/child feels constantly at risk of being ‘left out’ because of the
close parental couple and fears that a sibling might be favoured. Mitchell
(2008), considering the implications of rivalry, hatred and envy, evocatively
refers to ‘hidden’ siblings as rivals, suggesting that the presence of a sibling
evokes the danger of the other’s annihilation at least in part because
a . . . toddler appears partly to believe that the baby about to be born is another
version of itself (p. 29) and a potential replacement. This dynamic, although
simple and familiar to social and developmental psychologists (Dunn,
1988)1 as well as psychoanalysts, has a deeper meaning when played out
consciously and unconsciously among adults (Klein, 1959/1975).
Despite Segal’s assertion, above, that the Oedipus complex is the centre
of psychoanalytic work, the significance of the Oedipus conflict has waned
in psychoanalytic circles (Loewald, 2000). In Loewald’s view, this is firstly
because the Oedipus complex occurs repeatedly, in various forms,
throughout life, requiring repression of destructive instincts in order to
manage psychically. Thus that ‘mastery’, first established during the latency
(post-phallic) stage, occurs at different levels at different times of life, leaving
repression or ‘destruction’ of the associated feelings, to operate a form of
‘waning’ (p. 239). Secondly, the decline of psychoanalytic interest in the
Oedipal phase and Oedipal conflicts has occurred because of a shift towards
pre-Oedipal development focusing on the mother–infant dyad and issues of
separation-individuation and the self and narcissism (p. 240).
Defending against anxiety in organisational life
Elliott Jaques (1953) proposed a ‘strikingly close correspondence’ (p. 420)
between defences against early depressive and paranoid anxieties as
described by Melanie Klein (1928/1998, 1959/1975) and the way individuals
use organisational processes to defend against anxiety ‘naturally’ occurring
in organisational life. The dynamics of groups and organisations replay the
dynamics of early life, thereby bringing primitive anxieties to the surface.
This brings about social defences similar to the individual’s unconscious
defence mechanisms.
This work was developed further in the now classic study of a nursing
service (Menzies, 1984) in which Isabel Menzies-Lyth considered the work
of providing care for sick people, which was consciously and objectively
stressful and therefore likely to provoke anxiety. She suggested that the
intensity and complexity of the anxieties re-activated primitive unconscious
phantasies that the nurses then projected into their current work situation.
In order for the nurses to function, social defence mechanisms became
embedded in informal and formal rules that depersonalised the care offered
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P. Nicolson
to patients and the way nurses treated each other. Similar processes have
been described in a number of subsequent studies of hospitals (Lokman,
Gabriel, & Nicolson, 2011) and other organisations whose primary tasks
stimulate conscious and unconscious anxieties (Miller & Gwynne, 1972;
Obholzer, 1996; Schwartz, 1994; Sievers, 1999).
Oedipus in the organisation
The Oedipus complex, the . . . psychic representation of a central, instinctually
motivated, triangular constellation of child-parent relations (Loewald, 2000),
links with the metaphor of the ‘organisation as family’ (Brotheridge & Lee,
2006; Shapiro & Carr, 1991) and the application of family therapy concepts
to working as an organisational consultant (Hirschhorn & Gilmore, 1980).
In applying the Oedipus complex to organisational consulting then, it is
important to hold in mind Loewald’s description that there is an instinctual
motivation in the triangular constellation and that in an organisation, as in
the family, all the participants are engaged in finding a place that they find
tolerable within the system.
Leadership in formal organisations has been studied extensively
(Nicolson et al., 2011) but Freud’s insights about the role of emotional
relationships between leaders and individual members still out-shines some
more recent empirical contributions (Freud, 1922/1955). Particularly
relevant is his understanding of ‘dread’ as the outcome of threats to or
cessation of emotional ties between the leader and followers and between
the followers themselves. Loss of feeling (and thus loss of the leader him/
herself) in this way brings about panic and disintegration of the
organisation. These ideas suggest that the Oedipal ties (albeit painful
ones) are important to maintain some degree of structure, so members
might find and hold a place in organisational life, as indeed they must in the
family if it is to survive.
As Segal (2007), describing Klein’s Oedipal theory, suggests, Oedipal
phantasies give rise to fear of primitive persecutory maternal and paternal
figures (or a combined one). This combined figure is partly a denial of the
parental intercourse and also a projection of the child’s hostility to that
intercourse. This makes the combined parental figure particularly frightening. Such a figure might be represented by the senior management team in
an organisation, particularly one that appears (and might actually
be) relatively united in purpose. When this is the case, efforts are made by
junior members of the organisation to tear them apart either in reality or
phantasy.
The UK Coalition Government’s policy to increase university tuition
fees, despite the deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s pre-election pledge to
scrap them, unleashed hatred and fear of the partnership between Clegg
(Liberal Democrat) and David Cameron (Conservative). This was
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431
observable in attempts to undermine them as a couple by both LibDem and
Conservative MPs and Ministers, who justified their actions with accusations of betrayal. Images of Cameron and Clegg have shown them
‘together’, ‘united’ and the name ‘Cleggeron’ has been bandied around the
mass media. The male, ‘bisexual’ combination had proved to be particularly
frightening because it seemed to put itself and its relationship first and
beyond reach of what might be good for those under their ‘care’.
Unsuccessful paternal authority figures are sometimes perceived as
attempting to undermine and corrupt systems (Long, 2008; Stein, 2007).
The case material I draw upon below highlights the ways in which
instinctual unconscious anxiety, competition, envy, narcissism and hatred
are present in many organisations so that those involved as both
participants and consultants are sometimes taken unawares by those
dynamics.
Case study One: Incestuous siblings and the impotent ‘mother’2
The task involved a temporary organisation, set up for seven weekly sessions
for final year trainee clinical psychologists along with their core academic
staff, to design and run a mini-group relations event for first year trainees.
The group engaged in this project comprised 8 men and 10 women whose
ages ranged from their mid-30s to early 60s, with the majority being in their
mid to late 40s.3 Thus, this group could literally, as well as metaphorically,
constitute a family with parents, aunts, uncles and sibling children.
Sarah-Jane (one of the trainees) volunteered to be the ‘leader’, and
manage the event-planning during the first session. This offer, eagerly
accepted by the other 17 members, should perhaps have been read as an
early signal of impending danger to both Sarah-Jane and the temporary
organisation, as members had given up their authority without exploration
of legitimate authority, without love for the new leader (Freud, 1922/1955)
and without consideration of the relationship of the role to the task itself
[which had not been decided upon at that point] (Sievers & Beumer, 2006).
It was then agreed that Sarah-Jane would circulate (her version of) the
results of interim e-discussions to those who wanted them. John (one of the
youngest trainees) subsequently distributed a detailed table with a plan/
structure of the proposed event. It thus appeared that John was part of an
‘inner-circle’ privileged to share the secrets of the ‘senior’ members of the
family/organisation. It even seemed at the time that the group was moving
to a basic assumption (BaP) ‘pairing group’, with both John and Sarah-Jane
pushing the group towards ‘doing’ (Bion, 1961) and achieving Sarah-Jane’s
expressed desire for ‘concrete’ plans. But this couple may have only existed
in the group’s (or even just my own) phantasy.
By the end of the second meeting, John (or at least his ideas) had
disappeared (without obvious trace). It was as if he had been annihilated.
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P. Nicolson
Different plans were now on the table. As the remaining meetings
progressed, John became quieter but paradoxically more visible, apparently
‘watching’ chaotic struggles for power and influence over the group. I
myself4 could ‘hear’ him (noiselessly) saying, I told you so – you cannot
organise yourselves. At the session prior to the event itself, when roles for the
event-day were being allocated, John stated that he did not want any role
on the day. This led to an aggressive exchange when one of SarahJane’s management team5 did suggest a role for him. What had happened to
make John unable to fight for some leadership role following his early bid?
Had he turned from his ‘mother’, having experienced her potential
impotence?
His failed attempt to ‘combine’ emotionally with his mother during the
first two sessions had evidently opened a space around Sarah-Jane, enabling
rivals to take up that place instead. Perhaps she had become the bad breast
failing to acknowledge and nourish him when he had made his advances to
her with his initial proposal for a plan.
At this point, I offer a tentative hypothesis that John had sought to
‘penetrate’ his ‘mother’s’ consciousness with his ideas and his being but was
rebuffed. He therefore tried to ‘murder’ Sarah-Jane’s parental authority by
not playing the part offered to him by one of her proxies (Loewald, 2000).
This may have increased the anxiety felt by the group/organisation and
paradoxically led them to support Sarah-Jane in her role, thus increasing
anxiety further.
John did not succeed immediately (or even at all) in his murderous
intent, in that Sarah-Jane managed the group until the event itself. However,
she did not reach her final goal unscathed and several relationships
developed which consciously or unconsciously attempted to undermine her
in various aggressive ways. However, she remained ‘alive’ as the group
consciously and unconsciously combined in ensuring that all responsibility
for success or failure became hers.
One example of an attempt to undermine Sarah-Jane was through
Ginny, one of the younger participants, who became closer to John as the
weeks progressed. Her normally quiet voice became louder during each
successive planning meeting, and although she overtly expressed anger, I
cannot recall the detail of anything she said. There seemed to be something
unspeakable and intolerable for Ginny that she both did and did not want
others to ‘hear’. Perhaps she was holding the guilt, envy, disturbance and
fear for everyone else. Perhaps there was an unconscious BaP (pairing)
(Bion, 1961) so thinking could be avoided (which would otherwise require
taking up authority) and the group could then ‘mindlessly’ remove the
leader. Perhaps she combined with John (her sibling) to form a new,
incestuous parental couple (Freud, 1913/2007). Perhaps there were still
emotional ties between group members and the leader, strong enough to
prevent total panic and disintegration as long as John (and perhaps Ginny
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433
too) projected their feelings of murderous intention which were introjected
by the group.
Mitchell (2008) suggests that psychoanalysis emphasises the vertical
(child/parent) relationship overlooking the power and importance of the
‘lateral axis’, i.e. between siblings, which she also considers in the context of
group behaviour. Mitchell argues that sibling relationships relate more to
explanations of femininity than masculinity6 and thus prioritise fears of
annihilation, associated with girls (which shares an equivalence to the male
fear of castration). The girls’ fears involve the loss of love (or being loved),
an excessive narcissism which needs to be confirmed by being the object, not
subject, of love (p. 4). Perhaps this fear of losing the status as the love object
and the accompanying phantasy of annihilation goes some way towards a
hypothesis about some of Sarah-Jane’s behaviour. Perhaps John, as a man,
represented the possibility of Sarah-Jane’s annihilation as he might have
taken her place as the object of desire: the leader, manager and ‘chosen’ one
(Mitchell, 2008). However, it remains necessary to hold Freud’s idea
of libidinous ties between ‘siblings’ (group members, maybe John and
Ginny) in mind when trying to make sense of these behaviours (Freud, 1922/
1955).
Perhaps Sarah-Jane had striven to cast opposition aside, out of the
anxiety that any (perceived) dissent would destroy her. This brought to mind
the old adage that children should be seen and not heard. Decisions are
made by the adults who fear being replaced by the up-and-coming younger
generation (Lister, 2001).
Thinking about the primal scene in this context did not come to mind
initially because one lone female had been taking the lead. However, when
thinking about the attempt by John to become close to her and his
subsequent relationship with his other sibling, Ginny, Oedipal relationships
potentially illuminated gender/power struggles beyond and more deeply
than some conscious explanations of gender roles in leadership and
management (Nicolson, 1996).
Lister (2001) has suggested that a psychoanalytic reading of behaviour in
organisations alongside more traditional management and social science
perspectives can add key insights to processes that are destructive to
organisational life, such as envy in unresolved sibling relationships. Lister
was particularly concerned to show the relevance of the Oedipus complex in
making sense of the ‘intergenerational’ elements of family life, which might
have been played out by John/Ginny versus Sarah-Jane. There is the
suggestion that Ginny and Sarah-Jane, the two women involved, were
motivated by the fear of annihilation. Sarah-Jane moved forward to the task
regardless of what the others all ‘saw’ – in other words, John’s and Ginny’s
marginalisation. For Sarah-Jane, perhaps the lack of security from a father
(or mother) figure forced her into highly anxious, task-oriented competition
in the fear that she might somehow be left out or behind her siblings. For
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P. Nicolson
Ginny, the mother had failed to be conscious of her existence. Ginny, it
seems, had been annihilated by Sarah-Jane, the mother, because of SarahJane’s need to retain the phallus (of leadership) and thus protect herself
against her own fears of annihilation.
Case study Two: Child protection?
The consultancy comprised a reflective group of 10 newly promoted or
appointed team leaders and practice managers in a local authority
Children’s Services social work agency (Bamfordbridge) over 10 consecutive
weeks.
The primary task of that organisation is to ensure the safety of children
in the community, support vulnerable families and other carers as well as
overseeing fostering and adoption. The focus of my consultation was to
provide containment for the social work managers and, by proxy, to offer
containment too to the dysfunctional families they worked with, while also
holding in mind the ‘dark side’ of child protection services (Sievers, 1999),
such as turning a blind eye to some dangerous practices among both
colleagues and parents (Lenthall, 1998; Sievers, 1999; Steiner, 1985).
The Oedipal dynamics and phantasies, present in organisations, are
particularly vivid where parents and children are the centrepiece of the
work; the deprivation and abuse suffered by the children can impact upon
the professionals, with the social defences against anxieties interfering with
their capacity to think, which in turn can further compound the children’s
deprivation (Emanuel, 2002).
Cherry and the ‘King’
Since he was the manger of the organisation, and a man described to me as
‘hard to reach’, I did not expect to have much to do with Daniel (the
primary client) on a practical, face-to-face level. Like many fathers (or
kings), he was mostly unavailable, physically and emotionally, because of
work commitments. However, his importance resounded, consciously and in
phantasies, for the group and myself far more than I imagined or realised at
the time because I had lost sight of the ways in which emotional ties bind
people to leaders (Freud, 1922/1955).
Daniel was brought to my attention in many ways but here I want to
explore his role in relation to Cherry. Cherry, one of the newly appointed
practice managers who had worked as a social worker for several years in
the organisation, wanted me to know that she was a favourite in the
organisation and talked of her really good manager/mother (unlike those
whom the others in the group worked with) as well as her relationship (over
the years) with Sally (Daniel’s deputy). She mentioned Daniel frequently
too.
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435
During the first three meetings, her talk of her difference/separateness
from the others increased. She did not really know why she was here in the
group because their issues were different from hers and in fact she was not
worried about anything now she was working with a ‘good’ manager. The
others worked hard to maintain her being there. Possibly, they were curious
about what went on for her when they were not all together. I listened
carefully to what she was saying and she seemed to me to share many
experiences with the others (good and bad). So why did she need to separate
herself from her siblings?
Mothers and fathers have a relationship that excludes the infant/child
and that exclusion gives rise to envy and the desire to destroy, coming from
a hatred of being ‘the other’. Daniel was the primary client and we had
negotiated the consultation together. He had brought me into his ‘family’
world. Perhaps the family had been ‘doing alright’ without me. Why did
they need this (surplus) mother? What was my phantasy relationship with
Daniel? I may have seemed to be brought into their world from a secret
place that only Daniel and I knew of. The group members were perhaps
concerned to prevent the phantasy of the joined parental couple having the
potency to terrify them.
Being excluded from a parental or important management relationship
can give rise to attempts to seduce the parental figure by the excluded infant/
child/staff member. This could be experienced, unconsciously and consciously, as a means of gaining access to and acceptance by the parental
couple or management group. In this case, as I might have been Cherry’s
phantasy ‘(step)mother’, she could have wanted to test whether I had the
power to evoke Daniel’s potency and to put her back in her place – or to see
whether I would be put back in mine. Cherry also (I thought) might have the
power to attempt to destroy me through an envious attack on both me and
the group (her siblings), thus leading to the group’s disintegration which
would enable her, in phantasy, to keep Daniel to herself (Freud, 1922/1955).
How far might this reflect the lives of some of the families this organisation
worked with?
Seduction theory as presented by Freud is highly complex and related to
infantile sexual drives but does usefully apply to an organisational
consultancy such as this (Freud, 1905[1901]; Nicolson, 2012). It relates to
the time that the girl turns from her mother, who cares for her physical
needs, towards her father, phantasising that he has seduced her. This
‘heterosexual turn’ is based upon a frustration and disappointment with the
mother (Young-Bruehl, 2002), while for Klein the future adaptation to
reality for the infant/child is the degree to which they are able to tolerate the
deprivations emerging from the Oedipal situation (Klein, 1928/1998).
Cherry phantasised her specialness to Daniel; perhaps as Sally’s
(apparent) favourite she had linked Daniel and Sally as a parental couple.
I had arrived as both separate from that parental couple but also perhaps as
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P. Nicolson
a secret mother or even as part of a new parental couple that she felt
excluded from and she could not tolerate being deprived of her seemingly
privileged position. Such a family configuration might be familiar in the
troubled families with whom this group worked.
Britton (2007) suggests that resolution of the Oedipus complex and the
depressive position are intrinsically linked. The initial recognition of the
parental sexual relationship involves relinquishing the idea of sole and
permanent possession of the mother and this loss leads to envy. Resolution
for the child means relinquishing her claim on the parents, thereby accepting
their sexual relationship. However, if the resolution begins to take place
before a secure maternal object is established then Britton proposes that an
illusional oedipal configuration is formed as a defensive organisation in order
to deny the psychic reality of the parental relationship (Britton, 2007, p. 85).
This may offer some explanation of Cherry’s behaviour, as she did not
appear to want to give the mother/consultant a chance to establish a secure
relationship with her or her colleagues/siblings.
Discussion
The power of the primal scene, mirroring the dynamics around the Oedipus
complex, can be used as an explanatory framework for gender relations at
work (and in the ‘family’). This includes the phantasy of seduction of fathers
by daughters, mother/daughter relationships, sibling relationships and the
sense of exclusion or ‘otherness’ (Gerrard, 2010). Borrowing from Loewald
(2000), words such as ‘destruction’, ‘demolition’ and ‘parricide’7 and
consequent associations of ‘betrayal’, ‘seduction’ and ‘violation’ of bonds
that link parents and children need to be explored more directly in
organisational consulting. Linked closely to the ‘blind eye’ turned to abuse
within the organisation/family is the way in which the system fails to
manage its boundaries particularly of time, place and power/authority
relationships (Schwartz, 1994, 2010).
Each example described above indicated some degree of failure in
psychic resolution of the Oedipus complex and every scenario might have
been described, and unconsciously experienced, as an enactment of
dysfunctional family dynamics.
The first scenario, involving the group planning the event, suggested how
dysfunctional social defences against anxieties, panic about losing emotional
ties, about failure to complete the set task and thus annihilation of the
leader/manager, led to the unconscious ‘destruction’ of a group member.
Aside from the distress caused to him, and some of the witnesses, the team
lost the opportunity to include his specific expertise.
In the case of Cherry and Daniel, the ‘family’ scenario – father,
daughter, mother, step-mother – was omnipresent and Cherry found the
possibility that she might not be ‘different’ from her siblings, who might
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437
replace her if they were ‘identical’, unbearable. She also perhaps needed to
repress thoughts of others’ relationships with Daniel unless (like Sally) they
were people she herself was also close to. If ‘unknown’ or ‘outside’ others
were apparently close to Daniel, Cherry might attempt denigration and
annihilation in order to save her sense of specialness. This would be likely to
be destructive to her professional practice, as it would represent a failure to
learn from her own and others’ experiences, with the desire to compete being
too intense to allow for thinking.
Conclusions
In both case studies, the key players and the ‘bystanders’ apparently had
little room to think and learn, it seemed, because of the defences against
the anxiety produced by rivalry, envy and competition in the context of
‘secret couplings’. While it would probably not have been helpful for a
consultant to provide this interpretation to the clients, Oedipal phantasies
and defences against related anxieties may prevent conduct of the primary
task.
When even within clinical circles the importance of the Oedipus complex
is disputed (O’Shaughnessy, 2007), it is easy to see why organisational
consultants might dismiss or overlook the most significant ‘analytic tool’ or
lens for working in a psychoanalytic and systemic way, particularly when
considering leadership and gender relations in organisations.
However, the triangular situation and the possibilities for being ‘left out’
or ‘not having a place’ in the family, team or organisation is crucial to
understanding the power struggles (filled with competition, hatred, envy and
narcissism) which lie at the heart of both organisational dynamics and
family dynamics. Equally important, particularly for understanding the role
of gender in such struggles, is the inherent bisexuality, through which, girls/
boys/women/men have the potential to relate to each other in a number of
ways including through both love and hate.
A psychoanalytic perspective allows us to consider the ways in which
adults unconsciously re-play their experience of the primal scene and the
compelling influence of this on their relationships at work. Such thinking
thus offers a means of enabling both individual and systemic change. Holding
in mind the power of the primal scene in organisational as well as family life
may enable the consultant to make sense of some emotional conscious and
unconscious processes and identify to clients, in a less sexually evocative
manner, some ways in which patterns from family life are likely to repeat
themselves at work. Explicit discussion of work-place rivalries, feelings of
being left out when a colleague gets promoted or seems more favoured, the
influence of a leader on motivation, communication and relationships with
close colleagues, are all relevant and may all be presented best through a
‘down-to-earth’ comparison with family life. These present the client(s) with
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the potential to think about the less overt qualities in their families of origin
and learn about deeper aspects of their relationships at work.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Judy Dunn’s work provides empirical evidence confirming the importance of
sibling relationships for the infant and young child albeit without the analysis of
the unconscious.
Every name and some details have been changed in each case study to preserve
confidentiality.
All members were equal participants working alongside each other in this
exercise, with consultants appointed from outside the clinical psychology group.
I was one of the trainees in this event.
Part of the planning process had involved the emergence of a small group of
managers including a deputy director of the event. This group for the most part
had also emerged via ‘secret’ e-mail exchanges.
She suggests that this is the reason that psychoanalysis has tended to focus on
the vertical because that is a perspective taken on the whole by men.
The murder of one who stands in a special sacred relation as father, mother or
other near relative.
Notes on contributor
Paula Nicolson is Emeritus Professor of Critical Social Health Psychology of the
University of London (Royal Holloway) and a Practitioner Psychologist. Her
research interests and previous publications are in postnatal depression, domestic
abuse and leadership in health and social care organisations. She has studied
psychoanalytic ideas and practice at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation
Trust and the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships. Her books include V.
Smith, P. Collard, P. Nicolson and R. Bayne (2012) Key Concepts in Counselling and
Psychotherapy, McGraw-Hill and (2010) Domestic Violence and Psychology: A
Critical Perspective, London: Taylor and Francis.
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